Beginnings
The bank had a rough start, including near bankruptcy during the summer of 1879 when six banks in the area had to suspend activities due to financial difficulties. On August 1, 1879, the bank would run into further difficulties when its headquarters burned down; however, the bank would go on to thrive.
On July 29, 1896 the Bank of Hamilton's first Winnipeg branch opened. By December 1898, six more branches were opened in Manitoba. This marked the beginning of two decades of explosive growth in the West. In total, between 1898 and 1910, the Bank of Hamilton would go on to open 128 branches throughout Ontario and Western Canada. By 1928, this number had grown to 152 branches.
Like the other Canadian chartered banks, it issued its own paper money. The Bank of Canada was established through the Bank of Canada Act of 1934 and the banks relinquished their right to issue their own currency.
Read more about this topic: Bank Of Hamilton
Famous quotes containing the word beginnings:
“The frantic search of five-year-olds for friends can thus be seen to forecast the beginnings of a basic shift in the parent-child relationship, a shift which will occur gradually over many long years, and in which a child needs not only the support of child allies engaged in the same struggle but also the understanding of his parents.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)
“Let us, then, take our compass; we are something, and we are not everything. The nature of our existence hides from us the knowledge of first beginnings which are born of the nothing; and the littleness of our being conceals from us the sight of the infinite. Our intellect holds the same position in the world of thought as our body occupies in the expanse of nature.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“These beginnings of commerce on a lake in the wilderness are very interesting,—these larger white birds that come to keep company with the gulls.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)